Investigating the Oceans

To clarify, one of those appointments, which we will be making shortly, and transparently, will be of a member representing the interests of industry, so that it will have a voice at the top table. The MSCC has senior representatives of the major marine science funding Departments, including the devolved Administrations, and the key marine science providers, so it has the right people to make things happen. It has clout, and shortly it will have even more clout. I have mentioned the external perspective that we will shortly be bringing to it. Good progress is being made, although there is a curious dichotomy. There has been criticism of the slow speed at which the meetings have been pulled together and so on. At the same time, we are receiving some criticism about the pace at which things are happening. Why? Because to cover the range of stakeholders and everyone else out there who wants to be engaged in the process takes a fair degree of discussion and consultation. We are not having a 12-week consultation; we are having many head-to-head, one-to-one meetings. We are meeting representatives of individual institutions and organisations. We are doing it bit by bit. However, I take the message from today's contributions—I am aware of this already—that we now need to get a move on. We are committed to doing this and to delivering the strategy by the end of the year. In a moment, I shall go into detail on what we might see in the strategy. The MSCC has agreed its initial terms of reference, its membership, its governance provisions and the secretariat arrangements. The immediate focus now is on developing and implementing the UK marine science strategy. We have already agreed the broad outline for that strategy. I mentioned that we have put in place £600,000 for the period up to June 2010 to fund the secretariat. The MSCC met again just recently, on 13 March, in the form of a facilitated workshop to brainstorm the potential content of the strategy. A point was raised about the minutes of that meeting. The reason why there has been a small delay is that it was not a typical meeting. It was a workshop, a brainstorming session. As soon as the minutes are pulled together, which will be very shortly, they will be placed on the website. We want to ensure that the whole process is as transparent as possible, not least because the transparency will help, I hope, to bind people into it. If they see the discussions taking place and the evidence being put forward, they will be confronted with the reality of where we need to make progress. Work on the strategy has been progressing well. The MSCC's view is that the marine science strategy's overall aim should be to support delivery of the Government's vision of achieving clean, safe, healthy, productive and biologically diverse oceans and seas, as we set out in the marine stewardship report "Safeguarding our Seas". On the detailed content of the strategy, the MSCC's views are still evolving. That is part of the reason for the slight delay. We shall continue to ensure that those views are informed by stakeholder views, not simply top-down or Government views. However, the MSCC's outline views are these: it should be a short strategy and should not reinvent the wheel; it should probably be about 20 pages long—short and succinct; it should be sharply focused, addressing high-level, cross-cutting issues and providing direction on our future science needs; and it should concentrate on identifying where there are overlaps and gaps, because one of the things that we are not clear on is where the gaps are. We know that much good work is going on in many different institutions, but we are not clear on whether it is being duplicated and whether there are gaps. As we heard, the wide variety of the marine environment means that, by necessity, the science base has to be equally wide. However, we will need to prioritise. We will need to find opportunities for more collaboration, and to provide signposts to more detailed strategies to follow on from that. Improving communication and access to scientific information, too, is important. The House will be interested to hear that I was at a meeting only last week with the Crown estate. We dealt with a range of issues, but we took time to talk about the marine science base and some of the excellent work that it has been doing, such as mapping the marine environment. We also spoke of different uses being compatible in the marine environment, and about how the work can best be shared with other agencies, particularly in connection with the Marine and Coastal Access Bill. We need to go further, not only with the Crown estate but with many other organisations, including academic institutions, which sometimes try to closet their research. We need to be more open and to share information. The strategy will also need to consider the big science questions—for example, those relating to climate change. We need to ensure that an eco-systems approach is taken to the marine environment. We should also consider the wider interests of various stakeholders in the marine environment, including industry. The strategy will need to improve understanding between the MMO and the marine science base. It will also need to improve understanding between policy makers and scientists. The hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs asked whether it would be better for science to come under the MMO. No, it would not. That is a straightforward answer, and there is a simple reason. The MMO has a job to do. It will be unique in being the only body that implements high-level strategy at the regional and local level, alongside the inshore fisheries, conservation authorities and others. The MMO will primarily be a manager of the seas, and not working as scientists, although it will have to rely on the science base. The two will go hand in hand, but putting science with a planning body may lead to a conflict of priorities on funding, expertise and so on. Both are important, but the MMO is not the right home for science. The Bill has taken such a long time to get this far that I would not want to introduce the idea of slotting science in under the MMO. I mentioned that when talking about location a moment ago. The strategy will also need to recognise the important question of the long-term observation and monitoring of the marine environment. Those are the headlines for our discussions on marine strategy and our engagement with stakeholders. However, I and my officials are committed to driving things forward across Government and with stakeholders. I want the strategy to be done and dusted by the turn of the year, so that it synchronises with what we are doing elsewhere—such as common fisheries policy reform, the Marine and Coastal Access Bill and much else. We are determined fully to involve stakeholders—marine industries, academia, NGOs, and so on—in developing the strategy. We have already started; we can now continue. A series of stakeholder workshops will be taking place in Edinburgh and Reading later this month. We will follow that up by a variety of means, including smaller group meetings, one-to-one discussions and other tailored events, and we will put that information on the internet. We want to test the MSCC's emergent thinking on the strategy and to take on board stakeholders' views. I understand people's frustration over the time, but it is important to get things right. It is an iterative process that will lead to an outline document in around December, followed by a draft strategy—not further consultation but a draft strategy. We should be able to sign it off by the end of the year. I believe that is has a degree of synchronicity with our other broad aims in the Bill and elsewhere. The hon. Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough said that we need to keep our marine science expertise. I hope that I have demonstrated not only the funding aspects of our commitment, albeit that we always have to satisfy certain priorities, but that marine issues generally are high on the Government's agenda. My very presence here today as the Government's marine champion—I am only a humble junior Minister, but I can punch quite hard for my size—proves that we intend to keep and develop our marine science base and expertise. A significant number of marine scientists from other countries now work in our marine laboratories. They are attracted by the opportunities that we can offer and what they see coming down the pipeline. For example, our fishery scientists at CEFAS are independently ranked as world-class, and they include specialists from other countries who have taken the opportunity to work alongside our agency's scientists. The hon. Gentleman asked whether parliamentary time could be found for a further debate on the subject. I would welcome the opportunity, and I would support the process through the usual channels if an opportunity could be found. It would be good to report on progress, and to judge whether the Department had delivered. I am confident that it will. My hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, South-East (Dr. Iddon) rightly pointed out the importance of the marine and sea environment to climate change. He also pointed out the need to draw on the best science and evidence from wherever it comes. That would include the Proudman Institute and others, and what is going on north of the border. Britain's involvement in the 33 projects that my hon. Friend mentioned signals our intention. He will know that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State recently visited Antarctica with other environmental leaders on the international stage. He was convinced before he left, but he came back more clearly convinced of the need, in the marine environment and elsewhere, to lift our game in order to meet the challenges of climate change. My hon. Friend raised an important point about data sets. The United Kingdom marine monitoring and assessment strategy brings together all the major funders of marine monitoring with the associated data sets; the aim is to improve collaboration and deliver a more comprehensive picture of the marine environment. Associated with that, the marine discovery metadata standard—MEDIN—has been set up to improve access to and management of UK marine environmental data. We are striving to make the marine data sets as comprehensive as possible; that will indeed be covered by the strategy. As for data sharing, the point is well made; we need to ensure that we constantly try to prise open data sets, although some have commercial imperatives, and to share the best knowledge. In my short tenure as the Marine Minister, I have seen a wealth of knowledge in various places. My hon. Friend asked whether we have changed our stance on devolved matters. We have not; co-ordination within a committee is different from that within a UK agency. It is different from a double-hatted Minister, perhaps a Northern Ireland Minister, sitting on a broad ministerial agency. The MMO is not a UK body. It will liaise closely with Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, but it is an England body. One of the great successes of the Marine and Coastal Access Bill is the fact that we managed to work with the devolved Administrations to make it a UK Bill, but the MMO is an England-based organisation. Marine policy is the responsibility of different Departments and funding agencies. Each of them has specific requirements for marine science, including providing evidence on which to base marine policy and decision-making. It would not be appropriate to pass some of those responsibilities to a new super agency. We believe that our way forward will achieve the degree of collaboration between Departments and devolved Administrations, and make the strategy work. As I said, I am happy to return later in the year to show how that is evolving. The hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland, whom I am glad to see here and contributing to this debate, reminded us of the wider UK interest. These are actually shared seas. As was pointed out to me, earlier in my fisheries negotiations, it would be very easy to do quotas, if only the fish would stay in one place. Unfortunately, however, they do not; they swim all around the darn place—pardon my French, Mrs. Atherton. He was right to say that we cannot entirely divorce fisheries policy and science from wider marine policy and science. Sustainability on the seas presents us with important challenges in terms of conservation and marine habitat, and people making livelihoods off the sea. We need to be aware of that as we build the marine science base. Last week, when I was in Norway, I was fascinated to learn how Norwegians are progressing with their marine science and planning bases. Although we have some things to learn from them, they were also very interested in learning lessons from the UK. It was useful to build that relationship, and we intend to continue liaising. The hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs rightly pointed out the large challenges facing us—climate change, fishing and fisheries, biodiversity and pollution, including noise pollution. The commonality of all those is that they are all underpinned by good science. This strategy, if it is to do anything, will identify how best to deliver the science base to underpin our policies, whether on climate change, fisheries and reform of the CFP, or biodiversity. The point was rightly made: we will have to make some difficult decisions about areas to which we look for additional protection. However, if we can do that on the best science base, hon. Members can argue on the basis of the evidence, rather than on politics. We are all politicians, but it is important that we take this forward based on the evidence. The hon. Gentleman is also right about pollution. I hope that the measures that we have taken, way upstream, on nitrate protection zones, all the way downstream, on things such as marine litter projects, and everything in between, will get the support of hon. Members. I agree with him that marine science should be put at the heart of Government. That is what we are trying to do today, and we will continue to do so. I note—with only a slight smile—that he rightly said that, although a Conservative Government would support the science base, it would make no unfunded commitments. However, he then asked if I could guarantee that funding will continue.